RAND Corporation's Prediction of the Future Home Computer

Predicting the future is always a trick business. Yet it's interesting to see what experts think the future holds and also what people in the past thought today will be like.

Here is an illustration of how in 1954, the RAND Corporation thought a home computer will look like in the year 2004. Tim O'Keefe had found it in a 1954 Popular Mechanics Magazine.




The illustration note reads;

"Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible to the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With the teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use."

This computer looks more like a captains cabin in a ship than a computer. What the steering wheel for? And more than that, it's amazing to see that back then they had had such a high opinion about all these tiresome and ancient technologies.

This also makes me wonder what today's state of the art technologies will look like to people of 50 years time. How will the computer be in 2054? Will there even be a need for a separate thing called computer in homes? Will there be Artificial Intelligent houses? or will AI houses also be ancient to 2054 people?

(Click the picture to get a better look)